I finally got my Roboduino. The soldering was pretty straight forward. The only change I made was to replace the 3 pin header for power to a 2 pin Molex to match the one I have on the battery wires. Then I noticed there is no power switch! Oh well, I will use the power selection jumper instead. But the servos are directly connected to the battery, so make sure I don’t forget to unplug it when I don’t use the robot.

Then I wanted to test the board, so I unplugged the sensors and servos from my Balancing robot and plugged them into Roboduino. I didn’t screw the board to the robot, just let it hang over my old board. I had to put a piece of paper under Roboduino to make sure there are no unwanted shorts with the parts on the board underneath it. I also had to make a few changes to the code, because I plugged the servos and sensors into different pins. I loved the fact that the Rx and Tx pis are brought to 3 pin headers with power and ground, my serial LCD needs only the Tx pin, power and ground! Just plugged it like a sensor! Wonderfull!

Installing drivers for the USB FT232 was also easy, just followed the instructions on the Arduino website. I selected the Arduino Decimilla board and COM4 instead of COM1 and the code downloaded flawlessly. Ok, now let’s test it!

It works! Well, of course it works. Roboduino is a perfect little board. I’ve taken a couple pictures and a short video for you to see:

Front

Back

Edit: I have created a tutorial page to show you how you can build your own Balancing Roboduino!

43.670233-79.386755

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About Gabriel (Ro-Bot-X)

Robots, nature, bees, and gardening, how do they mix together? After too much indoor activities one needs to get out and breathe! Harvest natural energy and create a little paradise. And ask the robots to help, of course.

I can’t sell this robot (I reused the parts), but I can build another similar robot and give you a head start with the code. Now the code is not perfect, it needs more work to be perfect and also to be able to drive around, but that will be your part to do. I can use the last PCB from a batch of 10 pieces that I made a few years back that is compatible with Arduino software and not the Roboduino board, unless you order one yourself. The price for a similar robot all built with the Ro-Bot-X board, servos, Ping sensor, battery box, pot and chassis would go around US $150. That would include my work on it, not just a kit of parts. All mounted and programmed.

By the way, this is the program that I was using:

/* Balancing robot – on Roboduino
– uses 2 modified servos for balancing
– uses a potentiometer to adjust the perfect balance point
– uses one Ping))) ultrasonic sensor to read the distance to the surface
– uses a PID control algorithm to adjust the servo pulses so the Ping)))
sensor reading will match the value of the perfect balance point
*/

Serial.begin (9600);
Serial.print(“Ping)) balancing”); // print in the first LCD line
Serial.print(2, BYTE); // print in the second LCD line
Serial.print(5, BYTE); // start from the fifth position
Serial.print(“robot”); // text to print

If I were here to help everyone that asked me to help them build their robot, I would not have time for myself and my projects. Keep in mind that I have a full time job, a family to take care and only then, if I have time, I am working on my hobby, either by working on my robot, or doing research, or surveying the forums. Once in a while I write something worth mentioning here.

So, to answer your question, no, I can’t help you. To get help, please go to a robotic forum, like SocietyOfRobots or Let’sMakeRobots where you can post your questions and anyone available that has the knowledge will answer them.

If you have questions related to the robots I have built, you can ask here, but I can’t teach you how to build yours. Each robot is different, lots of work has to be done by the builder itself. So, good luck to you and your project!

I would love to get one from you..You can help me start building it now..Just let me know how should i pay you…a direct contact would be helpful…hope to hear from you soon..My contact would be lfc_1107@yahoo.com.sg

Thanks!
Unfortunately I sold the robot to a guy in Australia, I think he needed it for a school project or so. Anyway, there are a few problems with this setup, first, the servos can’t recover fast enough from a fall, speedier motors should be used, and second, the Ping sensor readings are not linear, they jump up or down, depending on the angle the sensor is at. So the robot is not stable more than a few seconds. Because of this reason, I could not make it to drive around.